Abstract

We derive predictions for Yukawa coupling ratios within Grand Unified Theories generated from operators with mass dimension four and five. These relations are a characteristic property of unified flavour models and can reduce the large number of free parameters related to the flavour sector of the Standard Model. The Yukawa couplings of the down-type quarks and charged leptons are affected within supersymmetric models by tan beta-enhanced threshold corrections which can be sizeable if tan beta is large. In this case their careful inclusion in the renormalisation group evolution is mandatory. We analyse these corrections and give simple analytic expressions and numerical estimates for them. The threshold corrections sensitively depend on the soft supersymmetry breaking parameters. Especially, they determine the overall sign of the corrections and therefore if the affected Yukawa couplings are enhanced or suppressed. In the minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model many free parameters are introduced by supersymmetry breaking about which we make some plausible assumptions in our first simplified approach. In a second, more sophisticated approach we use three common breaking schemes in which all the soft breaking parameters at the electroweak scale can be calculated from only a handful of parameters. Within the second approach, we apply various phenomenological constraints on the supersymmetric parameters and find in this way new viable Yukawa coupling relations, for example y_mu/y_s = 9/2 or 6 or y_tau/y_b = 3/2 in SU(5). Furthermore, we study a special class of quark mass matrix textures for small tan beta where theta_{13}^u = theta_{13}^d = 0. We derive sum rules for the quark mixing parameters and find a simple relation between the two phases delta_{12}^u and delta_{12}^d and the right unitarity triangle angle alpha which suggests a simple phase structure for the quark mass matrices where one matrix element is purely imaginary and the remaining ones are purely real. To complement the aforementioned considerations, we give two explicit flavour models in a SU(5) context, one for large and one for small tan beta which implement the Yukawa coupling relations mentioned before. The models have interesting phenomenological consequences like, for example, quasi-degenerate neutrino masses in the case of small tan beta.